Authored by Caden Pearsen via The Epoch Times,

A federal judge on Friday blocked the Biden administration from unlawfully redirecting taxpayer funds away from the construction of a wall along the southern border.

Southern District of Texas District Court Judge Drew B. Tipton granted a preliminary injunction after Texas and Missouri sued to stop the scheme, which included diverting the money to other projects like environmental remediation.

“Whether the Executive Branch must adhere to federal laws is not, as a general matter, an area traditionally left to its discretion,” Judge Tipton wrote in his order. The executive branch includes the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Judge Tipton, an appointee of President Donald Trump, ruled in favor of the Republican-led states, saying in his ruling that Congress should decide how money is spent, per the U.S. Constitution, and that the Biden administration is not immune from following the law.

President Trump declared a national emergency in February 2019 and used funds from the Departments of Defense and Treasury to construct barriers at the southern border. Congress allocated $1.4 billion explicitly for border wall construction during the 2020 fiscal year to stem the flow of illegal immigration.

However, President Joe Biden, a Democrat, issued an executive order immediately upon taking office in January 2021, terminating the emergency and halting construction. He later directed the DHS to divert the funds to ancillary projects along the border, but not the wall.

This led to both Texas and Missouri filing separate lawsuits against the DHS, which were ultimately combined.

The Biden administration argued that, despite certain language in the law, the DHS should be allowed to spend the money at its discretion.

However, the judge disagreed with this argument, effectively finding that President Biden was wrong to spend funds specifically meant for wall construction on “remediation projects.”

The judge ruled that just because the DHS claimed to have the authority to make certain spending decisions, it doesn’t mean it is free to do whatever it wants.

“Agencies, when afforded congressionally appropriated funds, may expend them only for the proper purpose and amount, and within the authorized period of time,” Judge Tipton wrote.

Therefore, without that discretion, the DHS’s spending decisions “run afoul” of the law, specifically violating the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).

Judge Tipton wrote in his order that the way Congress wrote the law was quite specific in saying the money should go to barriers along the border.

“The central question in this case, then, is this: Has the Government obligated FY 2020 and FY 2021 funds for the ‘construction of [a] barrier system’? The answer is largely no,” the judge wrote.

The Biden administration’s new border plan, unveiled by the Department of Defense and the DHS in June 2021 and updated about a year later, contemplated spending the funds on flood control, cleanup, and environmental remediation projects. This would include adding lighting, cameras, and detection technology at locations where a physical barrier had already been constructed.

Under the plan, most border wall projects were canceled, and all the existing barrier infrastructure previously funded by the DOD was transferred to the DHS’s control.

The attorneys general of Texas and Missouri, who challenged these spending decisions, hailed the ruling on Friday.

“Today, I secured a preliminary injunction against an attempt by the Biden Administration to illegally redirect statutorily obligated funds away from the construction of a border wall,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement.

“Biden acted completely improperly by refusing to spend the money that Congress appropriated for border wall construction, and even attempting to redirect those funds,” he continued. “His actions demonstrate his desperation for open borders at any cost, but Texas has prevailed.”

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey called the ruling a “huge step” in fighting to secure the southern border.

“The Biden Administration has failed to abide by the law to finish the construction of a wall along the southwest border,” Mr. Bailey said in a statement. “Joe Biden refuses to carry out his constitutionally mandated responsibilities, so we took him to court to force him to do his job. This is a huge step forward in the fight to secure our border at a key moment in our nation’s history.”

The city of Denver, Colorado has asked landords to start renting to illegal immigrants, Denverite reports.

On Tuesday, the city launched a program gathering information from landlords with property vacancies that rent for less than $2,000 per month. The city’s goal is to connect property owners with new immigrants in need of permanent housing.

Jon Ewing, spokesperson for Denver Human Services, said the city has already started hearing from landlords who want to work with the city on the effort.

The program was launched as the city continues to close temporary hotel shelters in an effort to scale back costs, which Mayor Mike Johnston announced at the end of February – a move he said could save the city some $60 million out of an anticipated $180 million in expenses related to the migrants.

According to city data, the number of people being housed in the shelters has dropped from 5,200 in mid-January to 2,000 at present.

“For ongoing housing, we’re trying to do more and better at the case navigation that gets people directly from shelter opportunities into housing, or into workforce options for normal travel, and so that continues to be our focus and it’s been successful for us over the last five weeks,” Johnson said at a press conference last week.

The migrants, mostly from Venezuela, have been looking for long-term housing in an increasingly unaffordable housing market. Complicating matters, many new immigrants lack work authorization that would allow them to secure legal employment in order to prove their income.

“We definitely need assistance in finding out what else is out there,” said Yoli Cassas, executive director of nonprofit ViVe Wellness, who says she opes that the city’s call to landlords will help open other housing resources that are currently unavailable.

“It’s been great because that means we’re gonna get more inventory to work with, which is what’s needed,” Casas said.

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Harmful microplastics have been found in human placenta, with some of them known to trigger asthma, damage the liver, cause cancer, and impair reproductive function.

The peer-reviewed study, published in the Toxicological Sciences journal on Feb. 17, examined the issue of nano- and microplastic (NMP) pollution in human beings. Researchers found that all 62 tested placenta samples contained microplastics, with concentrations ranging from 6.5 to 790 micrograms per gram of tissue. The placenta is an organ that develops in the uterus during pregnancy. It provides oxygen and nutrients to the baby while also removing waste products from the child’s blood.

The most prevalent microplastic found in the samples was polyethylene, which accounted for 54 percent of all detected NMPs and was “consistently found in nearly all samples.”

Polyethylene has been associated with several health complications like asthma, hormone disruption impacting reproduction, and mild dermatitis or swelling and irritation of the skin.

Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and nylon each represented approximately 10 percent of the NMPs by weight. PVC has been linked to damage to the liver and reproductive system. The substance is carcinogenic. While nylon itself is seen as harmless, the material undergoes chemical treatments during the manufacturing processes that can pose health risks.

The remaining 26 percent of microplastics found in the 62 tested placenta were represented by nine other polymers. Matthew Campen, Professor in the UNM Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, who led the team that conducted the study, expressed concerns about the steadily rising presence of microplastics and its potential health implications.

While plastics themselves have traditionally been seen to be biologically inert, microplastics are so small they can cross cell membranes, he noted. Mr. Campen found the concentration of microplastics in the placenta troubling as the tissue was only eight months old when tested. “Other organs of your body are accumulating over much longer periods of time,” he said.

Mr. Campen believes the accumulation of microplastics in human tissue could explain the puzzling rise in certain health problems like colon cancer among people younger than 50, inflammatory bowel disease, and decreasing sperm counts.

“It’s only getting worse, and the trajectory is it will double every 10 to 15 years,” he said. “So, even if we were to stop it today, in 2050 there will be three times as much plastic in the background as there is now. And we’re not going to stop it today.”

Talking about the rising volume of microplastics in the environment, Mr. Campen said that “if we’re seeing effects on placentas, then all mammalian life on this planet could be impacted. That’s not good.”

Microplastic Effects

The presence of microplastics in placentas was first identified in 2020 in a study from Italy. Researchers analyzed six placentas and identified 12 microplastic fragments in four of them. “Microplastics were found in all placental portions: maternal, fetal, and amniochorial membranes,” it said.

“Microplastics carry with them substances which acting as endocrine disruptors could cause long-term effects on human health.”

In 2022, microplastics were discovered in the lungs of a living human being for the first time. Out of the 13 lung samples, 11 had the presence of 39 microplastics. Researchers identified 12 types of microplastics commonly found in bottles, packaging, clothing, and rope.

A recently published study found microplastics in the majority of protein foods like chicken, pork, seafood, beef, and plant-based meat alternatives. The foods sampled in the study included processed, unprocessed, and minimally processed items.

Roughly half the identified microplastics were fibers, which researchers said was consistent with other studies. Almost a third of the microplastics were plastic fragments.

A 2023 study on mice found that three-week exposure to microplastics resulted in “behavioral changes as well as alterations in immune markers in liver and brain tissues. Additionally, we noted that these changes differed depending on age, indicating a possible age-dependent effect.”

Another study conducted in mice found that nanometer-sized particles reached the brains of the animals just two hours after being exposed. A third study found that inhaled microplastic and nanoplastic particles can “alter inflammatory, cardiovascular, and endocrine activity.”

Microplastics have also been found in breast milk. Researchers of the study called the finding a “great concern” given that nanoparticles have also been discovered in human placenta.

“In fact, the chemicals possibly contained in foods, beverages, and personal care products consumed by breastfeeding mothers may be transferred to the offspring, potentially exerting a toxic effect,” they wrote.

“Hence, it is mandatory to increase efforts in scientific research to deepen the knowledge of the potential health impairment caused by MP (microplastics) internalisation and accumulation, especially in infants, and to assess innovative, useful ways to reduce exposure to these contaminants during pregnancy and lactation.”

Since the 1950s, plastic use globally has grown exponentially, leading to the generation of a metric ton of plastic waste for every individual in the world. Roughly a third of the plastic that has been produced is still in use, with much of the remaining discarded or sent to landfills where they start to break down.

Mr. Campen pointed out that many plastics have a long half-life, which refers to the time required for half a sample to degrade.

“So, the half-life of some things is 300 years and the half-life of others is 50 years, but between now and 300 years some of that plastic gets degraded. Those microplastics that we’re seeing in the environment are probably 40 or 50 years old,” he said.

In a move that adds a new and likely Republican-favoring variable to a 2024 presidential race that features two unpopular major party candidates, the centrist “No Labels” political organization on Friday voted to move forward with fielding a ticket of their own. 

“Earlier today, I led a discussion with the 800 No Labels delegates from all 50 states,” said No Labels national convention chair Mike Rawlings. “They voted near unanimously to continue our 2024 project and to move immediately to identify candidates to serve on the Unity presidential ticket.” 

Founded in 2010, No Labels bills itself as a “national movement of commonsense Americans pushing our leaders together to solve our country’s biggest problems.” It’s not a political party, but is instead configured as a 401(c)(4) social welfare organization. That structure frees the group from having to disclose its donors or report on its actions. 

In 2021, No Labels launched an ambitious project to secure ballot access so it would be positioned to give a platform to a bipartisan ticket in the 2024 election “if the two major parties select candidates the vast majority of Americans don’t want to vote for in 2024.” As of late February, No Labels had secured ballot slots in 16 states, including Arizona, Colorado, Nevada and North Carolina. Though the group previously publicized ambitions to be on all 50 state ballots, they’re now merely aspiring to be on a “majority”

With the Trump-Biden rematch now a virtual certainty — and 67% of Americans saying they’re tired of seeing the same candidates — No Labels on Friday held a mass online meeting where delegates gave leadership the green light to try filling a ticket — by design, pairing a Republican and a Democrat as presidential and vice-presidential candidates, in no particular order. 

“Try” is the key word. Even as it announced it will move forward with its 2024 project, Rawlings acknowledged the group hasn’t identified candidates and may not be successful in finding a pair worth presenting to America. The selection process will be handled by the group’s leadership, who will present their recommendation to delegates for a vote. 

Last year, it appeared centrist Democratic West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin was a favorite to run with No Labels. In February, however, Manchin ruled out a bid, saying he had no interest in becoming “a spoiler.”

Similarly, after suspending her Republican nomination campaign last week, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley ruled out a run. “If I were to do No Labels, that would require a Democrat vice president. I can’t do what I want to do as president with a Democrat vice president,” she told journalists. 

One relatively obscure name did surface on Friday: The Wall Street Journal reported that No Labels is considering former Georgia lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan, a Republican, for the top of the ticket. He served from 2019 to 2023. Duncan’s centrist resume includes rejecting the idea that Georgia’s 2020 presidential race was rigged and seizing upon the dubious Georgia racketeering indictment of Donald Trump and others as an opportunity to urge the GOP to “move past Donald Trump.” 

Democrats are already feeling vulnerable in the face of broad party dissatisfaction with President Biden — to the extent that 13% of Michigan and 19% of Minnesota Dems voted “uncommitted” in their primaries. On top of that, polls suggest the presence of third-party and independent candidates give a net boost to Trump. Centrist think tank Third Way, for example, found Trump leads Biden by 0.5% in a in a head-to-head matchup. With the addition of an unnamed “moderate, independent” candidate, Trump’s lead grows to 2.5%.  

Leftists reacted with anger to Friday’s news. “No Labels has put their dangerous, reckless thought experiment ahead of the rights and freedoms of millions of Americans and the future of our democracy,” Rahna Epting, executive director of liberal activist group MoveOn, told The New York Times. “Any candidates who join the No Labels presidential ticket will be complicit in making it easier for Donald Trump and MAGA extremists to win a second term in the White House.”

Leftist vitriol against No Labels has been flowing for months. “Anybody who participates in this No Labels malarkey should have their lives ruined,” the Bulwark’s Jonathan Last said in December, according to No Labels. “The should lose whatever jobs they might have. They should be kicked off corporate boards” and “become social pariahs.”

Democrats aren’t the only ones clenching their fists over No Labels — the fake-Republican grifters at the Lincoln Project are also howling. “We’ve said it for months: A vote for No Labels is a vote for Donald Trump,” co-founder Reed Galen told the Journal. “The only way to stop the disintegration of democracy is to vote to re-elect President Biden.”

Authored by Amie Dahnke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

People with inadequate iron levels in their blood due to a COVID-19 infection could be at greater risk of long COVID.

A new study indicates that problems with iron levels in the bloodstream likely trigger chronic inflammation and other conditions associated with the post-COVID phenomenon. The findings, published on March 1 in Nature Immunology, could offer new ways to treat or prevent the condition.

Long COVID Patients Have Low Iron Levels

Researchers at the University of Cambridge pinpointed low iron as a potential link to long-COVID symptoms thanks to a study they initiated shortly after the start of the pandemic. They recruited people who tested positive for the virus to provide blood samples for analysis over a year, which allowed the researchers to look for post-infection changes in the blood. The researchers looked at 214 samples and found that 45 percent of patients reported symptoms of long COVID that lasted between three and 10 months.

In analyzing the blood samples, the research team noticed that people experiencing long COVID had low iron levels, contributing to anemia and low red blood cell production, just two weeks after they were diagnosed with COVID-19. This was true for patients regardless of age, sex, or the initial severity of their infection.

According to one of the study co-authors, the removal of iron from the bloodstream is a natural process and defense mechanism of the body.

But it can jeopardize a person’s recovery.

“When the body has an infection, it responds by removing iron from the bloodstream. This protects us from potentially lethal bacteria that capture the iron in the bloodstream and grow rapidly. It’s an evolutionary response that redistributes iron in the body, and the blood plasma becomes an iron desert,” University of Oxford professor Hal Drakesmith said in a press release. “However, if this goes on for a long time, there is less iron for red blood cells, so oxygen is transported less efficiently affecting metabolism and energy production, and for white blood cells, which need iron to work properly. The protective mechanism ends up becoming a problem.”

The research team believes that consistently low iron levels could explain why individuals with long COVID continue to experience fatigue and difficulty exercising. As such, the researchers suggested iron supplementation to help regulate and prevent the often debilitating symptoms associated with long COVID.

“It isn’t necessarily the case that individuals don’t have enough iron in their body, it’s just that it’s trapped in the wrong place,” Aimee Hanson, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge who worked on the study, said in the press release. “What we need is a way to remobilize the iron and pull it back into the bloodstream, where it becomes more useful to the red blood cells.”

The research team pointed out that iron supplementation isn’t always straightforward. Achieving the right level of iron varies from person to person. Too much iron can cause stomach issues, ranging from constipation, nausea, and abdominal pain to gastritis and gastric lesions.

1 in 5 Still Affected by Long COVID

COVID-19 has affected nearly 40 percent of Americans, with one in five of those still suffering from symptoms of long COVID, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Long COVID is marked by health issues that continue at least four weeks after an individual was initially diagnosed with COVID-19. Symptoms can last for days, weeks, months, or years and may include fatigue, cough or chest pain, headache, brain fog, depression or anxiety, digestive issues, and joint or muscle pain.

On Saturday Yemen’s Houthis have launched what international press reports are describing as the one of the group’s largest single attacks since the operation to disrupt Red Sea shipping began last November.

The US Central Command, or CENTCOM, described in a statement that a “large-scale” Houthi attack occurred in both the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden involving over a dozen suicide drones. The day prior, even more had been launched in a wave of attacks. It has been an intense 48 hours in the Red Sea.

Coalition naval forces shot down at least 15 drones which CENTCOM said “presented an imminent threat to merchant vessels, US Navy and coalition ships in the region.”

The Houthis have long declared they are directly targeting Western coalition warships in regional waters, along with foreign commercial vessels suspected to be en route to Israeli ports.

The US military statement confirmed that “US Navy vessels and aircraft along with multiple coalition navy ships and aircraft shot down 15” of the inbound drones. “These actions are taken to protect freedom of navigation and make international waters safer and more secure.”

The biggest single wave of Houthi drones launched prior to this week had included 18 drones and three missiles, in a January 9th attack.

Friday had also witnessed one of the largest single-day attacks thus far, per an account from the Houthis: 

The attack on Friday targeted the bulk carrier Propel Fortune, which continued on its way, according to the United States military’s Central Command. “The missiles did not impact the vessel,” the U.S. military said. “There were no injuries or damages reported.”

The Houthis said Saturday they were behind the attack. Houthi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree claimed that along with targeting the Propel Fortune Attack, the Houthi forces also launched 37 drones targeting American warships.

Last month and this month have been particularly devastating as a UK tanker completely sunk after being struck by missiles, and another Gulf of Aden missile strike on the Barbados-flagged ship ‘True Confidence’ resulted in the deaths of three crew members.

Some have argued that given the Western coalition is clearly ineffective in stopping the Houthi attacks, the only solution to the Red Sea crisis is for a ceasefire to take effect in Gaza:

“When we got the hostage release deal… Palestinian prisoners were released by Israel, and then there was a pause in hostilities to get humanitarian aid to Gazans, the Houthis stopped.

That’s the only thing that’s shown there to be de-escalation.”

–@TimKaine to @brikeilarcnn pic.twitter.com/IGhsqNW5ou

— Just Foreign Policy (@justfp) January 25, 2024

The attack on the True Confidence was the first ever fatal Houthi strike on a ship. The Shia miliary group linked to Iran has vowed to keep up the attacks so long as Israel continues its war in Gaza.

Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Job openings that require formal education credentials are “gradually disappearing” this year on Indeed, the popular job search website said.

As of this January, some 52 percent of job postings in the United States didn’t come with any education requirements at all. That’s up from 48 percent at the same time in 2019, according to a Feb. 27 report by Indeed Hiring Lab, the company’s economic trend analysis wing.

Over the same five-year period, the share of postings requiring at least some kind of formal education has fallen across nearly every schooling level, with postings requiring a bachelor’s degree or above seeing the sharpest job by 2.6 percentage points, the report suggested.

In addition, only 17.8 percent of U.S. jobs posted on Indeed required a four-year degree or higher, dropping from 20.4 percent in the past five years.

“While educational requirements are unlikely to vanish from job postings, growing support of skills-first hiring approaches is a clear sign for workers to invest in skills now, regardless of their education level,” Cory Stahle, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab, wrote in the report.

“In other words, even college-educated workers may have to think about re-skilling more going forward.” he added.

The labor market remains “tight”—meaning there are more job vacancies than unemployed workers willing and able to fill them, according to Mr. Stahle. For employers, this could mean that they may have to reflect on their hiring strategies and consider candidates who can demonstrate the required skills without necessarily having a degree.

“By implementing skills-first hiring practices where it makes sense, employers can attract high-quality candidates, compete in tight labor market sectors, and mitigate some of the demographic headwinds facing labor supply,” the economist advised.

When it comes to which roles skill-first hiring makes the most sense for, Indeed found that educational requirements have loosened in 41 of the 47 occupational sectors it analyzed during the past five years. This shift is more pronounced in some sectors than others, particularly in software development, project management, and tech-adjacent information design and documentation.

Jobs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) were among the sectors requiring the highest levels of education this January. For example, over 65 percent of industrial engineering jobs posted on Indeed explicitly preferred, if not required, a bachelor’s degree or higher.

In contrast, education requirements were lowest in sectors like driving (0.3 percent explicitly required or preferred a bachelor’s degree or higher), cleaning and sanitation (0.6 percent), and food preparation and service (1.3 percent).

There have been some ups and downs in college degree requirements over the last five years, Indeed noted. Interestingly, the website saw an uptick in bachelor’s and graduate degree requirements between 2020 and 2022 in 19 occupational sectors, especially knowledge-work fields such as accounting, architecture, and physicians and surgeons.

There could be many reasons behind the rise in educational requirements when the U.S. labor market was tightening, according to Indeed. One possible explanation points to COVID-19 pandemic-driven quits and early retirements, which forced employers to backfill roles vacated by experienced or educated professionals who retired or otherwise resigned.

“A sudden exodus of experienced and educated workers may have prompted a flood of backfill postings from employers seeking a close match to those workers who had recently departed,” Mr. Stahle stated, adding that the share of job postings requiring a college degree started to fall again in April 2022.

“It seems that the recent surge in public support for skills-first hiring and a shift in the types of workers being hired are the most probable drivers,” he wrote. “Even after adjusting for changes in job title-mix over time, there has been a noticeable increase in companies looking to hire workers with less formal education to fill their vacancies.”

The hiring trend described in Indeed’s report was also observed by LinkedIn, a popular business social networking website. According to an analysis published last August, almost 30 percent of paid job posts on LinkedIn in 2022 did not include professional degree requirements, up from 21 percent in 2019.

However, there remains the question of how many employers are translating the shift into actual hires. Greg Lewis, a senior content marketing manager at LinkedIn, noted that the percentage of degreeless hires made appeared to still fall short of the rate of degreeless jobs posted.

“Does dropping degree requirements actually translate into more hires of workers who don’t hold degrees? As we‘ll see, the answer for many industries and functions is ’no,‘” said Mr. Lewis. “While many have started to ’talk the talk’ of skills-first hiring, relatively few are managing to ‘walk the walk.’”

Last month we though that the January jobs report was the “most ridiculous in recent history” but, boy, were we wrong because this morning the Biden department of goalseeked propaganda (aka BLS) published the February jobs report, and holy crap was that something else. Even Goebbels would blush. 

What happened? Let’s take a closer look.

On the surface, it was (almost) another blockbuster jobs report, certainly one which nobody expected, or rather just one bank out of 76 expected. Starting at the top, the BLS reported that in February the US unexpectedly added 275K jobs, with just one research analyst (from Dai-Ichi Research) expecting a higher number.

Some context: after last month’s record 4-sigma beat, today’s print was “only” 3 sigma higher than estimates. Needless to say, two multiple sigma beats in a row used to only happen in the USSR… and now in the US, apparently.

Before we go any further, a quick note on what last month we said was “the most ridiculous jobs report in recent history”: it appears the BLS read our comments and decided to stop beclowing itself. It did that by slashing last month’s ridiculous print by over a third, and revising what was originally reported as a massive 353K beat to just 229K,  a 124K revision, which was the biggest one-month negative revision in two years!

Of course, that does not mean that this month’s jobs print won’t be revised lower: it will be, and not just that month but every other month until the November election because that’s the only tool left in the Biden admin’s box: pretend the economic and jobs are strong, then revise them sharply lower the next month, something we pointed out first last summer and which has not failed to disappoint once.

In the past month the Biden department of goalseeking stuff higher before revising it lower, has revised the following data sharply lower:

– Jobs
– JOLTS
– New Home sales
– Housing Starts and Permits
– Industrial Production
– PCE and core PCE

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 30, 2023

To be fair, not every aspect of the jobs report was stellar (after all, the BLS had to give it some vague credibility). Take the unemployment rate, after flatlining between 3.4% and 3.8% for two years – and thus denying expectations from Sahm’s Rule that a recession may have already started – in February the unemployment rate unexpectedly jumped to 3.9%, the highest since February 2022 (with Black unemployment spiking by 0.3% to 5.6%, an indicator which the Biden admin will quickly slam as widespread economic racism or something).

And then there were average hourly earnings, which after surging 0.6% MoM in January (since revised to 0.5%) and spooking markets that wage growth is so hot, the Fed will have no choice but to delay cuts, in February the number tumbled to just 0.1%, the lowest in two years…

… for one simple reason: last month’s average wage surge had nothing to do with actual wages, and everything to do with the BLS estimate of hours worked (which is the denominator in the average wage calculation) which last month tumbled to just 34.1 (we were led to believe) the lowest since the covid pandemic…

… but has since been revised higher while the February print rose even more, to 34.3, hence why the latest average wage data was once again a product not of wages going up, but of how long Americans worked in any weekly period, in this case higher from 34.1 to 34.3, an increase which has a major impact on the average calculation.

While the above data points were examples of some latent weakness in the latest report, perhaps meant to give it a sheen of veracity, it was everything else in the report that was a problem starting with the BLS’s latest choice of seasonal adjustments (after last month’s wholesale revision), which have gone from merely laughable to full clownshow, as the following comparison between the monthly change in BLS and ADP payrolls shows. The trend is clear: the Biden admin numbers are now clearly rising even as the impartial ADP (which directly logs employment numbers at the company level and is far more accurate), shows an accelerating slowdown.

But it’s more than just the Biden admin hanging its “success” on seasonal adjustments: when one digs deeper inside the jobs report, all sorts of ugly things emerge… such as the growing unprecedented divergence between the Establishment (payrolls) survey and much more accurate Household (actual employment) survey. To wit, while in January the BLS claims 275K payrolls were added, the Household survey found that the number of actually employed workers dropped for the third straight month (and 4 in the past 5), this time by 184K (from 161.152K to 160.968K).

This means that while the Payrolls series hits new all time highs every month since December 2020 (when according to the BLS the US had its last month of payrolls losses), the level of Employment has not budged in the past year. Worse, as shown in the chart below, such a gaping divergence has opened between the two series in the past 4 years, that the number of Employed workers would need to soar by 9 million (!) to catch up to what Payrolls claims is the employment situation.

There’s more: shifting from a quantitative to a qualitative assessment, reveals just how ugly the composition of “new jobs” has been. Consider this: the BLS reports that in February 2024, the US had 132.9 million full-time jobs and 27.9 million part-time jobs. Well, that’s great… until you look back one year and find that in February 2023 the US had 133.2 million full-time jobs, or more than it does one year later! And yes, all the job growth since then has been in part-time jobs, which have increased by 921K since February 2023 (from 27.020 million to 27.941 million).

Here is a summary of the labor composition in the past year: all the new jobs have been part-time jobs!

But wait there’s even more, because now that the primary season is over and we enter the heart of election season and political talking points will be thrown around left and right, especially in the context of the immigration crisis created intentionally by the Biden administration which is hoping to import millions of new Democratic voters (maybe the US can hold the presidential election in Honduras or Guatemala, after all it is their citizens that will be illegally casting the key votes in November), what we find is that in February, the number of native-born workers tumbled again, sliding by a massive 560K to just 129.807 million. Add to this the December data, and we get a near-record 2.4 million plunge in native-born workers in just the past 3 months (only the covid crash was worse)!

The offset? A record 1.2 million foreign-born (read immigrants, both legal and illegal but mostly illegal) workers added in February!

Said otherwise, not only has all job creation in the past 6 years has been exclusively for foreign-born workers…

… but there has been zero job-creation for native born workers since June 2018!

This is a huge issue – especially at a time of an illegal alien flood at the southwest border…

… and is about to become a huge political scandal, because once the inevitable recession finally hits, there will be millions of furious unemployed Americans demanding a more accurate explanation for what happened – i.e., the illegal immigration floodgates that were opened by the Biden admin.

Which is also why Biden’s handlers will do everything in their power to insure there is no official recession before November… and why after the election is over, all economic hell will finally break loose. Until then, however, expect the jobs numbers to get even more ridiculous.

A mid-air engine fire, a tire separating from the landing gear, several emergency landings—what the hell is happening in the aviation industry this week?

Here are the latest headlines: 

1. ZeroHedge (Tuesday): “Plane Was Nosediving”: United Airlines Boeing 737 Engine Erupts In Flames Over Texas
2. CBS News (Thursday): American Air jet clipped Frontier Jet on Miami International Airport tarmac
3. ZeroHedge (Friday): United’s Boeing 737 Max Jet Veers Off Runway In Houston, Marking Third Incident In Week
4. ZeroHedge (Friday): Tire Separates From Boeing 777, Crushes Cars In San Francisco Parking 
5. ABC7 News (Friday): SFO-MEX United flight makes emergency landing at LAX due to hydraulic failure: officials

US Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is silent on this week’s incidents. 

Some X users blame the series of aviation failures on the possibility of airline companies focusing on disastrous DEI policies.

Yet ANOTHER Boeing plane has had a near fatal problem in the air. The company is all aboard on DEI, so these problems are going to get worse. https://t.co/oI6RF06SUv

— Dr. Clayton Forrester (@DrClaytonForre1) March 7, 2024

So many DEI plane stories in the news today https://t.co/a8N9NqQN1o

— Salty OPS (@keegfish) March 8, 2024

Smfh.. Now we’re going to be dodging plane debris on the ground bc of DEI https://t.co/A6L6oPHrtW

— Atlas Shrugged (@saintlysinner5) March 7, 2024

Others ask the question: “Sabotage, shoddy maintenance, or other?” 

Engine fire
Runway mishap
Midair loss of tire
Emergency landing in Los Angeles
United Airlines is having a bad week.
Sabotage, shoddy maintenance, or other?
What’s going on at United?

— Dewey Harrison (@TruET1627) March 9, 2024

I’m starting to wonder if someone might be trying to sabotage Boeing?

United Boeing 737 Max suffers landing gear failure at Houston airport https://t.co/dXL4g8TW3t via @MailOnline

— Let Them Be Kids – 🇺🇲 (@DivineComity) March 9, 2024

United Airlines SFO incidents. Two days in a row. Sabotage?

— Mickey Dearborn (@DearbornMickey) March 9, 2024

Okay so is someone trying to sabotage Boeing planes or are they just falling apart on their own? Regardless I’m not flying United anytime soon. https://t.co/8OzSbikDnA

— Angeles Romero (@angeles524) March 9, 2024

What still haunts frequent flyers is the early January incident when a door plug ripped off the fuselage of a Boeing 737 Max. 

Meanwhile, on Saturday morning, NBC News quickly pushed out an article titled “Aviation incidents seem to be proliferating, but experts say there’s no reason for alarm,” which read like a damage control piece by the aviation industry to calm fears. 

“This is not a safety trend,” said John Cox, a pilot and the president and CEO of Safety Operating Systems LLC, of the recent spate of aviation incidents.

Let’s not forget the twin Boeing 737 disaster that killed 346 people five years ago.